


Glass Mask

by zielenna



Series: Leftovers [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, most probably unrealistic childhood angst, overabundance of Hamlet references, ungentlemanly language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 11:11:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4519713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zielenna/pseuds/zielenna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A portrait of the squib as a young girl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass Mask

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote it back in June, orignally as first part of a longer piece which was supposed to be "Life and Times of Audrey Weasley", or something in that vein. But since June some time has passed and the fic below is now a separate story, unrelated to Audreys, Weasleys and others.

_At this one instant, the glass barrier between the doubles dissolves, and Alice is neither here nor there, neither art nor life, neither the one thing nor the other, though at the same time she is all of these at once._

_Negotiating with the Dead_ , M. Atwood

 

* * *

 

Your life is one dream, Celia. This was what people told her when she was younger. They never understood why it made her nervous, red-faced and teary-eyed. Well, those people weren’t a girl of five or six being told her life had been one dream: all of it a dream and nothing but a dream. Was she then an invention of some other Celia who slept in some other bed?

 

This question kept her awaken at night – long enough to hear her mum and dad come home. Celia used to ask her nanny (one or another, their faces always the same) about it. Your parents are hard-working people, the nanny said. They need to work to keep such a house with three such children in it. To keep your lives lovely as they are. Your life, she said and Celia pouted. It was one dream.

 

Later, Celia learned. ‘One dream’ meant ‘good’. It pleased Celia to know her life was a good one. There were hours in which she wasn’t sure of it. How dull it was to be stuck there in her home with nanny when Juniper and Benedict were in Hogwarts. How awful it was to be dismissed by them when they were back in summer. Oh yes, they were much older. Years and years. Benedict didn’t care for her at all and Juniper hesitated between cherishing and reproaching her. She would kiss Celia on a cheek one day and another call her an ugly liar (Celia did lie a bit, but certainly not more than the others did). And mum and dad weren’t there, or if they were, it was a Ministry party and Celia had to go to sleep. To her comfort, Benedict was sent upstairs, too. Those were only moments he thought Celia interesting enough to bother with her: he prompted her to go and eavesdrop downstairs. She was so little and no one would notice, he said. He was right. As she was lowering her foot from one step to another, Celia felt excitement run through her and mix with anxiety (she wasn’t sure if she feared being seen or remaining unseen).

 

When mum and dad and Celia at last were together, it didn’t feel special enough. All waiting Celia did and it came to slow afternoons spent watching old muggle films (Celia’s mum and dad were proud of their cultural heritage and declared an intention of passing it to her, of giving her cassettes for heirlooms). Have anything happened, mum and dad asked. Not really, Celia answered. It was a question on magic. But Celia did dream it. Or was it the glimpse of the other’s Celia life?

 

 

The question on magic remained unanswered and then it ceased to be a question altogether. The arrangements were made: the nanny was sent away and a tutor was sent for, since Celia needed to be prepared for the muggle school she would attend soon, one year older than her classmates. There were no more slow afternoons: mum and dad lost their taste for muggle films. The tutor, at least, was fine. Apart from teaching Celia dull muggle school-stuff, she took her outside to see the muggle city (Celia lived in it, her home next to a muggle one, but she hadn’t had a chance to see it before). There were old fairy-tale-like buildings and there were pictures hung on the walls inside, pictures of women and fruit and ships. Celia’s tutor called it art and used it as a proof for muggle’s worth. It is no shame to be one, her tutor said. Celia wasn’t. Neither a muggle nor a witch.

 

The trips stopped after some time. The reason Celia was told was her safety. She was becoming clumsy, it was true. When Celia observed her undressed body in the mirror damp with steam coming from the bath, she noticed bruises and cuts . Walking on a street or around the house, she was falling or scarring herself or taking a wrong step. It was as if her body went against her. What she was able to control was buried inside her skull. Other parts ruled themselves. The number of injuries grew. Celia’s body appeared to be determined to hurt itself. There was no solidarity between it and the insides of Celia’s skull. In truth, her thoughts on the matter were filled with disdain. She sometimes was able to see herself from the outside – to go out and have a seat in the front-lines. What she saw was pathetic. Here was a mindless body hurting itself. It didn’t move Celia. Why would she care for such a character, such an object, when it was useless and empty? Her tutor wouldn’t allow Celia to say such things. Her tutor was a squib herself. It was a life as good as any other, she said. Celia thought it wasn’t one dream.

 

Juniper, who had graduated from Hogwarts the summer before, came often to see Celia. She lived elsewhere in London and already had a job. There was no clear purpose to her visits. She asked Celia what was she studying lately and how did she found it. Celia tried many tricks, but it was impossible to answer such question satisfactorily. She remembered what the nanny had had to say of brilliance of Juniper and Benedict. It had been supposed to make Celia feel proud of them, but when she was confronted with brilliant Juniper’s demanding stare, she felt no pride at all. There was always an error. If it was particularly large, Juniper got mad. She was tired, because she too was hard-working and to come to see Celia was the most exhausting job of them all. Didn’t Celia imagine how hard it was on her? To have such a sister. Juniper was sleepless with worry. And if only Celia studied to have a promise of success, at least in the muggle life. Celia cried. There was a pause. Jupiter knelt and hugged her and apologized. There would be ice cream next time, she said. There was: ice cream and peace and tenderness, until Celia made another error.

 

Benedict didn’t care. During the Christmas break there were parties and he wasn’t sent upstairs anymore, so Celia didn’t see much of him. Once, Benedict came to her room. He looked around and looked at her and sighed. Well, so this is it, he said. Tell mum to take care of your hair, you look like a feral cat. And he left. It was Christmas, so Celia repeated it to mum and mum had a while to pass. She was talking to her assistant (parents’ assistants were expected guests during the holidays) as she was cutting it, Celia’s hair. Celia wondered if her mum could get engaged in the conversation enough she would slip and cut Celia in two.

 

Celia was told the name of her school only a few weeks before September. She was also told it was a boarding school in a town in Middlesex. Too far for Juniper to drop by, she thought. Out of sight from London. Her mum said it was an all girls’ school and wasn’t it a fun idea. Her dad said it was a respectable muggle school providing its pupils with possibilities for the future. His distant muggle acquaintances had acquaintances who had sent their daughters there and were most satisfied. Celia felt strange being watched so attentively by both of them at the same time for so long. It should have felt like a treat, but it didn’t. There was a swimming pool, her mum added.

 

Celia’s tutor packed her suitcase and went looking for another squib child to teach. Celia eavesdropped and so she heard her speaking. Damn depressing, she heard, should’ve got out of business long time ago. It was killing her, Celia heard.

 

On the evening before her departure, Celia stared long into the mirror in the bathroom. Her body was bruised. Her legs, mostly. They were purple and blue and yellow and green. On her hands, there were traces of many paper-cuts. Celia in the mirror eyed Celia in the bathroom. Celia slipped into the bath and tried not to be inside her body. She would curl up in the skull and sneak out through an ear. Or an eye. She was more sure of her eyes. When she slept, she dreamed. The old doll of Juniper’s Celia once found was floating in water. The doll didn’t look like itself, because in Celia’s dreams it was porcelain and broken, too, while in reality the doll was soft and pillow-like. But she knew it was the one. Around the water, there were other identical dolls. Those weren’t broken. They were all shining in the light of reflectors. Oh, and it was a film. Celia was sorry to wake up and realize it wasn’t.

 

 

Celia didn’t make friends. She was used to her parents co-workers’ children who usually were slightly worse off than her and therefore envious of her toys and desperate for her attention. She knew nothing of films muggle girls her age watched and recognized neither actors nor singers they pined after. She, at last, was clumsy and could play neither volleyball nor football what gave her an unfortunate position of the last team-mate chosen. To acknowledge it and side herself with outcasts (there were a few; poorer or angrier; swearing and smoking) would be too much of an effort. So she became no one in particular: a colourless filling of a school uniform. There were days she spent unasked and unseen, ignored by students and ignoring teachers. When they asked her anything in class, she gave them an obstinate stare and said, I don’t know. I don’t know. Her grades were below average, but she had no problems passing however it was by the minimum effort. The teachers attempted to contact her parents but they were unreachable. At last they gave up and decided to let Celia be. She had been home-schooled all her life, after all. The school had to be stressful. Let us wait and see her adapt.

 

They allowed her to wonder during their lessons, eyes stuck at the blackboard and her mind slipping out. She would stand next to herself and observe it: an uncared for body. Dull. She imagined. There was no fixed vision she attached herself to. Sometimes, there were dragons and knights. Sometimes, there were rockets and astronauts. Sometimes she imagined being an ocean or a sleeping volcano. When she got lost so, deep inside her skull, the look on her face was one of thoughtlessness. Her parted lips and slow reactions got her a reputation. Shortly, other girls decided she had to be nuts. It made some of them more cruel and some it made kinder. Celia didn’t notice the difference: those days, she rarely was here. There was no reason to.

 

Juniper regularly sent letters. They read like lists. Celia didn’t open some. It would weigh her down, somehow. Add a burden to carry and make sneaking out of her mind difficult. The letters were dull, anyway.

 

Soon before Christmas, another letter came. From her parents. There were troubles in the wizarding world, they wrote. Nothing Celia should worry about. It would be for the best if she spent the winter break at the school. Surely some of her friends were staying also. Love, Mum and Dad. No presents were attached or came later. The story went Celia Cadbury was nuts and her parents sent her away and didn’t want her to come and were going to sell her to a sheikh for a wife to never see her again. It was all written down on a paper torn out of a notebook and passed on in the class, from one giggling girl to another, each adding new details (a fifth wife, not to mind the harem, in golden chains, here’s the picture, you drew her too pretty). The teacher read it out loud. The girls were looking at Celia. She wasn’t there. She was nowhere.

 

Celia spent Christmas reading. Books were good; they added a construction to her visions and furnished them with heroes and creatures. Her favourite was Roald Dahl. When she had read  _Mathilda_ , she spent an hour staring at her pencils. Nothing moved. Well, she guessed it didn’t matter. She took another book. Some parts she read out loud to herself, carefully modelling her voice so it would become a strange one. It amused her. When she went to sleep in an empty dorm, she didn’t think of dreams and other Celias, but of her books. It didn’t stop after the break was over. She read and read and she didn’t care if she was heard (she wouldn’t mind at all). Eventually, it too turned into a rumour. What was the nutter Celia up to these days, and, Oh, so she is talking to herself now. The kinder girls, two or three of them, approached her in the library and asked her to read for them. Anything she wanted. She did. They told her she was good at it. She said, what of it. She was out of habit with receiving kindness and so she wasn’t sure what to do with it. It offended the three girls. Celia was left to herself, again.

Her parents sent a letter before Easter, too.

 

 

In summer, she wasn’t sure if she was happy coming home. She was supposed to and it was enough. Juniper collected her with her bags and she managed the teachers and said hellos to the parents. They used a portkey to reach the living room in their home. It was empty. No one was waiting for them. Juniper made them a meal and, unasked, told Celia what had happened. Last summer, the Ministry had fallen (Celia had no idea what it meant). The good men were out and the bad men were in. It had to do with blood. There were bad people who believed blood had to be pure and old and there were good people who fought them. There was a war. Everywhere was dangerous. (Celia began to wonder whether her parents and Benedict were killed. It would be an excuse for their absence upon Celia’s return.) All of them, from dad to Benedict, lost their jobs. They weren’t safe, being known for cultivating their affiliation with the muggles. They weren’t safe, having Celia as their daughter and having her sent to a muggle school. (Celia imagined cloaked figures killing her parents and her brother with her names on their lips. You better had not have such daughter. Such an useless empty daughter. Celia imagined cloaked figures standing before her, surrounding her, closer and closer, their breathes heavy.) Celia was crying. For Merlin’s sake, Juniper snapped. Why are you crying? You weren’t there! We had to hide, we had to live from hand to mouth and you know what I did? I wrote you letters so you wouldn’t worry! Imagine how it must have felt! Listing birds I had seen instead of people I had seen dead! Why are you crying?! You have no right. You have no right. Juniper was crying, too. She stood up and walked towards Celia (Celia raised her hands to cover her face) and hugged her, too heavy and too tight. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. We all wanted you safe. It was for you. It was all for you. So you will have a world to live in. So you will be happy. So you will never cry. Don’t cry, Celia. Don’t cry.

Celia swallowed her tears and raised her head. But are they alive? Yes, of course they are. Juniper bent down and kissed her on a cheek and on a forehead. Not easy to kill a Cadbury. Because we are strong? Because we are smart, Juniper said and smiled. They returned to the table. Of course, Hugh and Zenia (Juniper and Benedict called their parents by name. It was because Hugh was Juniper’s step-dad and Zenia was Benedict’s step-mum) got their jobs next day after the war had finished. There is so much to do. Benedict got back, too, and Juniper starts again in a week. She postponed it to have some time to give to Celia. So there better be no crying, because it’s the first holiday Juniper had in years.

There was no crying. Celia wondered if she was smart. She didn’t feel like it.

 

 

They spent the week alone (mum and dad slept in their offices and Benedict slept Merlin knows where). Celia read to Juniper and Juniper beamed and said, see, you have grown up, and she said reading was serious business, and she said it was good Celia had taken it up. How were her grades? Celia lied (there was a paper in a file Juniper was given. Celia had to steal it for some time). Once, they went to Diagon Alley. They had ice cream and Juniper made purchases of some kind. She wanted to take Celia to a joke-shop, but it was closed. Well, Juniper sighed. Something else then.

Every next week, Celia spent with a nanny. She read and the nanny read, too. It was letters. Sometimes, the nanny cried. She asked Celia about the muggles she went to school with. Were there any good? Celia wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say. They were nice enough, she said. Nice enough, the nanny repeated. We died for nice enough. Celia blinked. She knew where her parents kept alcohol (Juniper took some for herself, too). She gave the nanny some whiskey. In the books, all sad people drink whiskey. Celia hoped the nanny wasn’t of the smashing-glass kind. The nanny wasn’t. She squeezed Celia’s hand and said, thank you.

 

 

These holidays were good. Not a dream, but good. On some nights, Celia woke up with Juniper’s words ringing in her ears. You weren’t there, you have no right. The ringing made her ears hurt. She wanted to slip out, to leave those words and the ringing and her aching body (there were more injuries, little accidents, over the summer. More determination to hurt itself). You weren’t there, you have no right.

 

 

Benedict appeared. He was hoping to see Juniper, but there were only Celia and her nanny, seated in an arbour with a bowl of fruit between them. Oh, it’s you, he said. He took some raspberries, crushing the others. The lucky girl. How was your year? Nice, Celia said. Well, mine wasn’t, Benedict said. He took out a tissue to clean his chin of juice. In fact, it was fucking awful. The nanny coughed. What, am I making you uncomfortable? I do think I have a right. After all, my sister owes me some. Right? Celia nodded. She wished Juniper was there. She wished her parents were there. She wished she wasn’t there. She tried slipping away without Benedict noticing, but then – look me in the eye, he said. Look me in the eye. Are there horrors in it? Her brother had nice eyes, girly, with long eyelashes. Fuck nice, he said. Do you know anything? Celia nodded. Well. Don’t ever fucking forget it. You ruined us. You deserve it. The nanny stood up and asked him to leave. Benedict smiled, showing his teeth pink with raspberry juice. There was a cracking sound of disapparition and then silence. Warm wind rustled the heavy leaves. Cars were riding somewhere. Celia was floating up in the sky with clouds and birds. Sun was the only thing mattering.

 

There were hours passing. There was a body. There wasn’t Celia. When she came down, she was out of air and the world was black. The nanny said Celia was having a fit.

 

Mum and dad came and slept for a day and a half. Celia had the nanny teach her how to make coffee and so she prepared it for them when she heard them again, awoken. She carried two best cups on a tray, forcing herself to stay within her body and to control it. Dad and mum smiled when they saw her. Our girl, they said. Easily, however tired they were. Mum kissed her. Are you alright, Celia asked. She felt like choking. We are. We are. Celia’s eyes were wet. She tried to blink the tears away. She had no right. She wasn’t there. She was lucky. Celia?, her parents ask, their eyebrows furrowing. Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no. The tray was dropped. The coffee was spilled. The body around her was shaking. She ruined them. She deserved it.

The nanny said, you worried your parents. Celia felt her chest tightening. The nanny asked, what was it about? Nothing, Celia said and slipped away. She had to keep a distance from herself. She had to float. Outside, she was free. She was no one and she had done nothing. Outside, she waited for the summer to end.

 

 

Summer ended. Celia was transported to Middlesex, clothed in a school uniform, her hair cut and braided by the nanny. There was a letter from Juniper in her bag: a list of advice she hadn’t had the mind to make last year. It was divided into sections: on essay-writing, on studying, on conflicts (subsections: with teachers and with students). The list wasn’t going to be useful, since large part of it assumed some previous action on Celia’s part. There was none. She read. She dreamed. She slipped out. There were no memories forming in her mind. If she were to look at the period from the distance of five or ten years, she would have a vague sense of unreality with no particular images of it. The world was swimming in Celia’s eyes. She floated. There were no sections and subsections and bullet points. Sometimes, Celia mistook a dawn for an evening. She could remember no face and no name of people around her. Her grades sunk and the teachers became more pressuring. She had to stay after the lesson and listen to them repeating themselves for her sake. Her essays were incoherent. Her body was blue and purple. Words flickered before her eyes. Right and deserve, dead and ruin. She could make no sense out of them. At night, she opened her eyes and didn’t recall the question which had to be asked. The blank space in its place would worry her, but such sensation was too palpable for her to feel. Then, she was devoid of concretes. Her life was a bubble, breaking.

 

 

Another teacher told her to stay after the lesson. She wasn’t sure what the lesson was. English, she decided looking at the blackboard. There was a scheme of accents of iambic pentameter. Her teacher told them it was modeled after the heartbeat. (In such way, Celia got through her tests: remembering loose fragments and spinning the webs between them). The teacher was a newer one, fresh-faced, quoting her university professors. She said, Celia, I have a plan for you. She opened a book of poems and passed it to Celia. Read, she said. Celia hesitated, because the poem was filled with old words and she hadn’t known yet who was the speaker, but after a few lines she decided it was an evil queen. She mimicked faces the queen would make, with raised eyebrows and pouts, and she made her voice slower, seductive, something like the way the older girls spoke. It wasn’t hard to become the queen. All Celia had to do, was to slip out and let the poem take her place. Have it pump her blood. The teacher was silent when she finished. You have a talent, she said. Celia didn’t ask what of it and kept her mouth pursed. You are an actress, Celia, the teacher said. And so Celia was.

School theatre club was added to her schedule. Practices were held twice a week in a long room in the attic. There were brighter and more spacious classes available, but the tradition was to practice acting there. The other girls – seven of them – were fond of it and said it had a soul. Celia wouldn’t know. They didn’t like her, because she was weird and clumsy and the pet of club’s head, but it was all gone when they read their lines. Celia was given best roles and so when she let the poem take her place, it were noble and tragic heroes who took her place. Sometimes, the girls who she was in the club with weren’t sure which was real, for the character Celia played appeared to be much more of a person than she ever was. The most sensitive of them went as far as falling half in love with her. When the teacher decided they were going to perform fragments of  _Hamlet_ (on a school festival, an occasion Celia didn’t bother with last year), the girl fought her tooth and nail to be cast as Ophelia, but the teacher decided it would be more fitting to have her as Horatio. Celia was to be Hamlet, of course. Some of the older girls argued it would be ridiculous to have the youngest one taking up such role, but the teacher, with all of ardour recent university student was able to summon, told them it was crucial to have Hamlet younger than the others were.

The theatre eased Celia’s mind. Her body ached less, because it wasn’t her and Hamlet’s instead, so there was no need to hurt it. She never stopped acting Hamlet, whether it was during a shower or a lesson. Her family took the appearances of Danish court. Girls who played Ophelia and Horatio became the closest what she had to friends. They had some other names, but Celia didn’t remember those. Ophelia and Horatio they were for her. They sat together in the dining hall and practiced their lines as they sipped grape juice and swallowed rice pudding. She muttered verses under her breath, shaping her thoughts after them and finding a reflection of her heartbeat in the sounds the words made. Nothing what Celia was in Celia left. When she came home during the Christmas break, she shut herself in her room and spoke her monologues. The teacher told her (a woman of the court) that a Shakespearean hero never spoke to himself: it was the audience he needed to address. Juniper (a ghost of the old king) was busy and Celia didn’t want to see or be seen by Benedict (a grave-digger). She decided to speak to her teddy bears and dolls she had from the time she was a dream-child. Her favourite part, a soliloquy, the woman of the court called it, began so:  _O, that this too too solid flesh would melt thaw and resolve itself into a dew!_ There was no Celia, only Hamlet. It was supposed to be a desperate cry, but there was no shaking off the dreamy feel of it. A body, dissolving. A spirit, free to float. Wasn’t it one dream.

 

 

Her parents asked her to recite a fragment before their guests on the Christmas party. Celia was clothed in new robes and Juniper applied a delicate make-up on her face. Her hair was made into a bun, so she would appear boyish.  _Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust_ , Hamlet spoke. There were claps and cheers and a glass of wine in his hands. The grave-digger offered it, together with a skull-like smile. The ghost of the old king passed through the room in its long and mist-coloured robe. Gertrude and Claudius were sitting at the top of the table, united and beatific. Some said, those verses remind me, and another said, oh yes, quite. To the heroes, to the order, to the dust the good people made. Excellent, the ghost said. You made an impression, the grave-digger said. Impression, my lord? Nay, I  _was_. I know not ‘impressions’. The hall shivered, unsteady with the wine drunk. There was a killing to happen. A poison in one’s ear, which would hurt like a bell ringing within. The king and queen stood up and it was said there would be a baby born in a summer month. A sibling. Hamlet had no siblings. It did not fit. It did not fit. Then, there must had been a fit. The world went black.

 

Dear Benedict should not had given her wine. Why, she was but twelve. Light heads, little girls have. Light as bubbles.

 

 

There had been costume rehearsals. Hamlet was to wear black tights and a black tunic. It made him look rather like a blackboard. When ghost, his hands white with chalk, touched him, he left fingerprints all over it. So did Ophelia. The teacher explained it to them saying it was a metaphor. Hamlet wore the marks of the dead and  _Hamlet_ bore interpretations in a similar manner. People wanted to form him and Hamlet himself was a pure negative. Full of negative capability, like Keats’s poet. At those words, the teacher smiled as if she was remembering a childhood friend of hers, someone she climbed trees with. The girls whispered, Ms Posner is weird. Hamlet stood on the stage and waited for the others to take up their acts, to begin the play, again. And so they played. Hamlet spoke, Hamlet cried, Hamlet died. Horatio buried his face in his tunic when Hamlet asked him to make him, for the last time, into a story.  _Draw thy breath in pain to tell_. All were clapping.

 

 

Easter break started, but there was no coming home. The play was all to be thought of. Hamlet was all to be. The woman-ghost dropped with a visit on her own will. She brought the news of the sibling – it was a girl – and a box filled with cosmetics, rummaging if shaken. They were seated in front of the mirror, a student and a teacher, the make-up being applied. You will need it for the stage, the woman-ghost said. We are all so happy for you. The box is yours. It is a present. A peck on a cheek and she was gone, away to the Ministry. Tubes and bottles lied scattered on the table. Eyes in the mirror were staring back. Glass was cold. There was a faint outline of small red lips on it. _A dream itself is but a shadow_.

 

 

The stage was built, wooden and reminding of gallows. Dark curtain was stretched under the ceiling. There were many seats. Behind the stage, actors were turning into people. Horatio was putting Hamlet’s hair into a bun. Ophelia was revising her song. Polonius and Laertes were texting their boyfriends to make sure they were in the audience and ready to applaud. A strange figure out of costume came by and told them to pass on the list, because there was an obligation for all participants of the festival to be registered. School archives and such. The names were written,

 _Madeleine_ and 

 _Georgie_ and 

 _Louisa_.

Then, the paper stopped. Hamlet, pen in fingers and ready to write, stared at the page with blank eyes. Write your name, they said. Your name. What – what was – was it Hamlet? It was worth a try. Oh no, Horatio’s brow furrowed and he said, no jokes, we need it for the archive. Your name.  _Was buried. Thy breath in pain. But a shadow._ A wave of heat swam through his – her – his – body. The colours mingled. Words circled around her head, faster and faster, a carousel banging inside her skull. Then, a crack. Oh no, oh no, oh no. The world was black.

 

 

She ruined the show. Had to use doublers. Everything was off-key. Nutter after all, whoever thought of casting her in the main role. Ruined the show. Ruined, ruined, ruined (Horatio and Ophelia disappeared).

And have you heard? The lights flickered while she was at it. There was something – strange, you know – in the room. As if she was possessed. No, of course, I don’t mean – but she is rather odd, isn’t she? It makes you wonder. If anybody was, well, I believe it would be her.

 

 

There was an empty body which had no name. It could be Celia or Hamlet. Nothing was sure. When it awoke, there was a room with a table and a chair in it. On the table, there was a sheet of paper and a pen. The pen felt familiar. Celia, the pen wrote. It was a word used to describe the insides of the body. Those insides were to be kept away. In a box, rummaging if shaken. Any other word might be used to describe new insides. Better insides, more comfortable insides, insides with no memory. There was Celia. There was Hamlet. If Hamlet was used, it would be considered (it was) a madness. There was Celestial, supremely good and belonging to Heaven. There was Celebrant, a rite-performer. Those were no fit. Above the table, there was a mirror with an outline of lips on it. The eyes from the mirror stared at the paper. In the mirror, Celia was alieC. Allie C. Or Alice. A mirror-name. Smooth and cold and unbroken. A name for a bubble who knew how to slip out. Alice, alright. Purple-blue Celia with bells in her ears, to the box. Alice stretched in the chair. She stood up and walked to the window and opened it. Then, she screamed. After all, she was a new-born.

**Author's Note:**

> Hamlet references are, well, Hamlet references. Ms Posner is a shout-out to "The History Boys" Posner, although I didn't write her as his female self. Too cheery. The poem Celia reads is "The Laboratory" by Robert Browning. Except the title, there's not much of it in the fic itself (at least, nothing I'd intend).


End file.
